A few days ago, I saw an email on the new NLB app and downloaded it. It's much easier than using Overdrive to search for titles but it is slow and it is not a reader; I still have to read in Overdrive.
Anyway, so I found a cute book "Are You My Mother?" and downloaded it. I meant to read to both the verbal boys but weekdays are tough so I decided to prioritise Kai who is *gasp* going to K1 next year!!! My big boy is growing up so fast!!!
Anyway, anyway... Overdrive got stuck the day I told Kai that I had something for him *.* So it wasn't until yesterday that I finally managed to open the ebook and read it myself in the day before reading to Kai at night, with Yu asleep in my arms, Kai next to me, Sito next to Kai and the iPad propped up on the duvet in front of us.
And Kai liked the story! He asked me to read it to him again :)
Tonight, he wanted the story again but Yu was fussing so I only managed to read the first three or four pages before I had to walk around with Yu. Then - and this was where he impressed me - Kai went on to read the book himself!
Of course, he couldn't read the words but based on the pictures, he told the rest of the story. And some parts, he gave the exact lines from the book, apparently purely based on what he heard last night!
It hit me that he learns more by listening. Just back in September, he cried when I was trying to ask him to read some words on a worksheet. Think it's better to learn from a story, better with pictures, than from words alone?
As I wrote the above para, I suddenly remembered that when he didn't show interest in hardcopy books, I attempted to tell him stories at bedtime with no books. I made up a few stories - the little boy who lost his bolster, the lady whose house burnt down, the totally random Bumblebee Transformer teaching bad boys a lesson, and lately, his own poop stories. And I must always use the same lines and the same order of events or he would correct me. One day, a long time after we stopped telling the bolster story, he even told me that story himself, using very similar lines.
Now I'm very motivated to read more to him :) It's better then YouTube any day! We've recently switch to YouTube Kids and will soon impose a time limit for each day or session, tbc with Sito...
I'm also thinking of imposing a ban on devices at the dining table, not just for the kids but for the adults too. To be fair, we seldom need to whip out the phone for the kids when we dine outside. But we do sometimes watch Thomas or flashcard DVD during meal times at home - does that count?? Anyway, the adults tend to be the culprit these days! 上梁不正下梁歪 so better to not model undesirable behaviour. After all, we do wish our kids would communicate with us over a meal than be passively absorbed in cyberspace...
Even playing RPG with Papa is better than watching YouTube on his own!
Well done little ZK! I absolutely believe as well that stories are so much better for the kids than random flashcard words. Coz it's not about memorising words, but getting them interested in stories to begin with.
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